Every Exquisite Thing

by Matthew Quick

  When he finally rolls off, they discover that she bled all over, so they quickly strip the bed and wash the sheets before his parents see. Nanette has to teach Ned how to use the washing machine and dryer, because his mother has always done his laundry, so he has no idea what to do. He smiles like a happy wolf as he watches her pretreat the bloodstains and pour the detergent and set the machine for sheets.

  They play video games with Ned’s brother until the sheets are dry, at which point Nanette makes the bed alone and begins to cry in her pretend boyfriend’s bedroom.

  In her mind, she keeps saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” but she can’t figure out to whom she’s offering the apology.

  “Are you okay?” Ned says when he finally checks on her. She’s just sitting there on his made bed. “Are you crying?”

  “No,” Nanette says, wiping her eyes.

  “Okay,” Ned says, like he’s afraid. “Do you want to come downstairs with us now?”

  Nanette nods and then pulls herself together so that Ned’s little brother won’t be worried or upset.

  Little Seth mostly keeps his eyes on the TV screen, so he doesn’t notice how red Nanette’s eyes are, and Ned doesn’t ask about her crying again.

  33

  Coach Seems Very Pleased

  Somehow Nanette finds herself at State College speaking with the women’s soccer coach, lying about all sorts of things—like how Nanette really wants to play college soccer and how she’s learned and grown from the experience of missing her senior year and how soccer is now her number one priority and how much she would love to continue playing alongside Shannon.

  They even watch a highlight reel of Shannon and Nanette’s many combo soccer scores, which Coach Miller had put together and sent along. Nanette feels like she is watching a fictional character score goal after goal as she sits in the glow of the TV screen in the coach’s dark office. Her dad can’t help but clap and cheer as the balls go into the various nets.

  This new college coach seems very pleased, especially since Nanette’s parents have agreed to pay her full tuition, which means the coach won’t even have to use one of her athletic scholarships to recruit Nanette.

  “We’re a family here,” the woman says from behind a huge desk in her office. “One big unit. We do everything together. You’ll never walk alone on this campus. You’ll eat, sleep, study, and train with the team. Once you assimilate, you’ll become part of something larger than yourself—a team capable of doing so much more than any one of us can do alone. That’s our philosophy here. United we stand. Divided we fall. There is no I. There is only us. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect,” Nanette says, and even manages to maintain eye contact before her parents and this new coach all trade smiles.

  34

  You Will Hate Yourself for It

  The night before prom, Nanette cannot sleep and around 1:00 AM, she finds herself rereading The Bubblegum Reaper. She hasn’t read it in months, and she falls prey to Wrigley’s spell all over again, which makes her feel guilty about her recent experiment.

  Around 3:30 AM, Nanette comes across a line neither she nor Mr. Graves had underlined before, which seems odd, because it immediately sends her searching for a highlighter in her desk.

  And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late.

  Nanette turns on her bedroom light and looks for herself in the mirror over the dresser.

  She sees Nanette, but she also sees all the little bottles and tubes of makeup she has been wearing, and the electric-blue prom dress that her mother and Shannon “helped” her pick out; it’s hanging behind her, on the iron canopy bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m so sorry.”

  35

  It Feels Like She’s Sitting on the TV Remote Control

  On the day of the prom, Nanette leaves school early with the other girls whose parents wrote notes so that they could get their hair and nails done in the afternoon. Riley, Shannon, and Maggie insist that Nanette put the top up on her Jeep because they don’t want their hair to get messed up, even though it hasn’t been styled yet. She does what the group wants even though it’s her Jeep and she prefers the wind through her hair.

  A small woman scrapes off the dead skin from the bottom of Nanette’s feet. She has her fingernails and toenails filed and painted sky blue. Her hair is carefully arranged and hair-sprayed. Makeup is professionally applied. She is transformed into someone else.

  “Are you okay?” Shannon asks as her nails are drying.

  “Yeah,” Nanette says. “Why?”

  “You’re so quiet.”

  “Isn’t Nanette always?”

  “Yeah, but today I can sort of feel your quiet. It’s weird.”

  Nanette smiles at Shannon’s use of the word weird.

  It’s the worst thing you can be according to Shannon and company, but it’s what Nanette most longs to be—at least the way Shannon means.

  Nanette has looked up the word weird, which can mean “supernatural” or “fantastic.”

  It can also be used as a noun to mean “fate or destiny.”

  But Shannon doesn’t know that.

  Nanette’s parents take pictures of her in the electric-blue dress, and they seem so happy to see her all dolled up like this, ready for prom, doing what eighteen-year-old girls in America are supposed to do.

  She pretends to be happy.

  She’s still doing the experiment.

  She smiles with all her might.

  The boys have rented a limo, and when they arrive, all the other girls have already been picked up, so Nanette rounds out the number at eight. After a few more pictures in front of her house—the boys goofing around with rented top hats and canes, acting childish in the most innocent of ways, making the parents laugh and trust them—Nanette is seated on Ned’s lap in the limo. He’s stroking her leg with one hand; his other is on her belly. Hidden under Nanette’s ass and the fabric of her dress is Ned’s erection. It feels like she’s sitting on the TV remote control.

  A flask of vodka is being passed.

  Loud music that Nanette doesn’t know or like makes it impossible to have a discussion.

  It may be the same stupid song they play over and over at parties, because the boys are—once again—rapping about fucking other people’s bitches, and pointing gun-shaped hands at each other’s noses.

  And as Nanette looks around the limo, she feels as if she is trapped like a wild animal in a cage for the first time.

  Off to her left, she sees a heavily made-up girl reflected in the window. It takes Nanette a second to realize that the girl is Nanette. She gazes into her own pupils and sees the void that’s opened up inside her, swallowing everything like some black hole of happiness—and then something deep within Nanette sparks back to life.

  She jumps off Ned’s lap, bangs her fists on the glass separating them from the driver, and yells, “Stop the limo! Stop the limo! Stop the fucking limo right fucking now!” over and over, until the driver finally brakes.

  “What’s wrong?” they all ask her.

  She’s no longer acting the part.

  There will be a punishment for this.

  Their faces are full of hatred.

  Their faces say that Nanette isn’t supposed to scream like that.

  Their faces tell her to be quiet, sip vodka, sit on Ned’s boner, and smile like the other girls in the limo.

  She doesn’t answer but struggles to get out.

  The boys pull her back and say that everything is okay.

  Too many hands are on her.

  “It’s not!” Nanette yells. “Let Nanette out!”

  “Where do you want to go?” Ned says. The look in his eyes suggests he’s somewhere between confused and angry.

  “L
et her go. Let me talk to her,” says Shannon.

  Shannon’s man finally opens the door, and I jump out of the limo, kick off my pumps, and start to run barefoot down the street.

  “Where are you going?” Shannon yells. “What the hell, Nanette?”

  When the limo begins to follow me, I cut behind houses, jump over fences, rip my prom dress in several places, scuff my pedicure, until I’m sure I’ve lost my classmates.

  Then I’m sprinting barefoot through the streets like a marathoner, except for the restrictive prom dress.

  I’m headed toward Booker’s.

  When I arrive, I’m soaked in sweat and panting hard.

  My feet are bleeding.

  I look behind me and see blood on the pavement.

  I ring the doorbell several times.

  Booker answers and says, “Well, look who it is, my prodigal daughter. Are you wearing a prom dress?”

  “Why did you write The Bubblegum Reaper? WHY?”

  “Um… why are you yelling at me? Sandra is inside along with Oliver and his new girlfriend, Violet. We’re having the most delightful postsupper tea. Would you care to join us?”

  A pang of jealousy hits me—Booker has moved on from Alex and me to Oliver and Violet. But I’m also sort of happy that Oliver has someone besides his mother in his life.

  “You can’t just play with our heads!”

  “Whose heads?”

  “Your readers!”

  “Wait a second. Is tonight your prom? Is that why you’re dressed like—”

  “Yes!”

  “And you stood up your prom date. Like Wrigley?”

  I can see the color draining from Booker’s face.

  “Yeah. Well, kind of.”

  “I never told you to do that!” Booker roars. “And I didn’t tell Alex to climb the outside of a building, either! I just wrote a story! You can’t hold me responsible for everything you do after reading my novel!”

  “Well, reading your novel changed my life. And now I’m confused and lost and barefoot in a prom dress regardless of whose fault it is!”

  “It’s not my fault!”

  “What do I do now—with my life?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “What did Wrigley do? After he floated in the creek at the end of the book? What happens next? I really need to know. You owe me.”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  “The truth!”

  Booker sighs, looks at his shoes, and quietly says, “He grew up, Nanette. Worked several jobs he loathed. Failed as a writer. Was unlucky in life and love. Became an old man. Found Sandra at the end. Tried to help a few kids along the way. That’s it. Not really worthy of a sequel, if you know what I mean.”

  “But is Wrigley okay after the book ends? Is he all right now?”

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  “Why won’t you give me a straight answer?”

  “Because there’s no such thing. That’s what you learn when you grow up. No one knows the answers. No one.”

  I take a long, hard look at Booker.

  He’s just a wrinkly old man.

  And he’s telling the truth; he really doesn’t have any answers for me now.

  Everything he had went into The Bubblegum Reaper, and there was nothing left over.

  I might still be hungry, but that doesn’t make him an endless literary buffet.

  “Good-bye,” I say, and then turn my back to him.

  “We’re playing Scrabble later. You should come in. I think your feet are bleeding. You should really let us attend to your cuts. Nanette? Don’t go like this. Please. Nanette?”

  I keep walking—every step hurts now—and when I arrive home limping, I tell my shocked parents about the experiment that I was conducting and how I tried to be normal, but it just was too hard in the long run.

  My mother cleans the cuts on my feet and gets me out of my prom dress and into the bathtub.

  I cry it out in a sea of white bubbles as Mom squeezes a sponge over my shoulders, letting warm water run down my back, and then I’m left alone to weep in private.

  I weep for Alex.

  I weep for me.

  I weep for the end of my childhood.

  I weep because I no longer believe in heroes like Booker.

  But mostly I weep because I am so fucking tired.

  When I finish, my parents and I have a long talk, during which I say that I will not be playing soccer anymore and that I seriously have no idea what I want to do when I graduate from high school. “I need time to think,” I tell them over and over again until I’m sure they understand that I’m serious.

  When my diatribe is over, my parents look at each other.

  Silence hangs thick in the air.

  Finally, Mom says, “You’re actually speaking in first person again?”

  I hadn’t realized it until now. “I,” I say, tasting the word I once more. “I guess I am.”

  “Why today?” Dad asks.

  I think about it for a second and then say, “Because it’s time to be me.”

  36

  Squinting Out Her Rage

  When Shannon returns from a weekend of postprom partying in various vacation homes down the shore, she’s sunburned and a bit bloated from binge drinking. She looks like shit, to be honest. I know because she pays me a visit in my bedroom.

  She closes the door behind her, crosses her arms, and says, “Why?”

  “Why what?” I say from my bed. I’m seated with my back against the wall. I had been reading an inspiring Bukowski poem called “Roll the Dice.”

  “Why did you freak out like that in the limo?”

  “I really don’t think you’d understand, Shannon.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m just not like you, okay? I’m just—not.”

  “What? Is it so horrible to be me?”

  “No. Not at all. No judgment here. I’m not trying to… It’s just that I don’t go to proms, and I… Maybe it’s like you’re a bird and I’m a fish, and I’ve been out of water for a dangerous amount of time and—”

  “You’re a teenage girl just like me. We both grew up here. We’re both from privileged white families. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  I can tell that she doesn’t even want to understand me, so I just say, “I’m sorry,” meaning, I’m sorry that we aren’t going to connect here with this little chat, but she takes my apology to mean something else.

  “You should be sorry,” Shannon says, pointing at my face. “You completely ruined Ned’s prom. What did he do to deserve that humiliation? Why did you agree to go and then leave him like that? If a boy had done that to a girl, it would have been bad. But for a girl to do it to a boy—you completely cut his balls off right in front of his best friends on what was supposed to be the best night of his high school experience. He was devastated, Nanette. I mean—he really loved you. And now every time someone asks about his prom—until the day he dies—he will have to lie or tell the super-embarrassing story about how Nanette O’Hare ditched him before they even got there. Do you think maybe you could have broken up with him in a slightly less dramatic way? Or faked it until high school was over, like I’m doing with my boyfriend? Ned drank himself into oblivion all weekend.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again because I don’t know what other words I can offer.

  “You were completely selfish and a total bitch. Next year when we go to—”

  “I’m not going with you next year.”

  Shannon glares at me, and her face turns an even brighter shade of pink. “What?”

  “I’m not going to college in the fall. I need time.”

  “Time? Time for what?”

  “To figure out who I am. What I want. Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re told to do something pretty much every second of our teenage lives, and then at the end of it we’re just supposed to pick a college and a major and a career without ever really getting a chance to think about it? You’r
e just supposed to go regardless of whether you know why you’re going or what you hope to accomplish. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Not to mention all the money our parents are supposed to pay for something we’re not entirely sure we even want.”

  “You really don’t believe that anyone else thinks about those things? You don’t think the rest of us worry about what college will be like or what major we should choose? My god, Nanette, it’s all anyone ever talked about this entire fucking year!”

  “But do we really think about it deeply or do we just ultimately do what we’re supposed to do? What our parents want us to do? What society wants us to do? I mean, do you really want to play soccer next year? Do you really want to be an elementary school teacher? Do you even like kids?”

  “Yes! I absolutely do! I love soccer! It’s my entire life! I’m really looking forward to working with kids! I am! Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Well, I’m happy for you, then.”

  “Why don’t you want to play soccer? Soccer is fun. It’s a game. And it’s better than sitting alone in your room feeling sad for yourself.”

  “I just don’t like playing. Simple as that.”

  “What do you like then, Nanette?”

  “I like listening to music and reading poetry and novels. I like seeing art house films. I like having philosophical discussions as I look up at a hunter’s moon. I like being alone with one other person, rather than being at big parties full of so many people who you never manage to have a real conversation with at all. I like swimming in the ocean. And I like—”

  “I like swimming in the ocean. Everyone does. And I always have real conversations at parties. I talk to everyone there. I like movies. Again—pretty much everyone does. Maybe you’re just a snob, Nanette. Maybe you think you’re better than the rest of us. You’re going to end up all alone if you’re not careful. I mean, now that Alex is gone, do you even have any other friends besides me?”

  Her bringing Alex into this—someone she’s never even met—crosses a line.